Transit growth in Asia, particularly in China, has continued, and even accelerated in the past few years. This growth is not new, of course, Chinese cities have been adding transit rapidly over the past several decades. As of 2017, this shows no signs of slowing.

ITDP looked at bus rapid transit (BRT), light rail transit (LRT), and Metro growth in 373 urban areas around the world, and found that metro growth in Chinese cities is the largest single contributor to new kilometers of transit in the world. However, LRT development was more robust in Asia than any other continent for the first time in 2017, and BRT is growing strongly in Argentina. The 2017, there was a total of 897 km of rapid transit infrastructure built, with Metro accounting for 707 km (79%). LRT followed with 135 km built in 2017, a 2.4% increase over 2016. BRT accounts for the remaining 55 km, with the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina accounting for 50% of global BRT construction in 2017.

Construction of rapid transit infrastructure has increased tremendously since the beginning of the new millennium. The opening of BRT and metro rail systems has been at a faster pace, thus contributing more to the rapid transit growth for the past two decades. The LRT concept gained a wider recognition in the 1980’s before declining in the 1990’s, and then slowly growing in the last 15 years.

Comparing the rapid transit growth on yearly basis, there was an overall 18% decrease in the kilometers of infrastructure added in 2017 compared to 2016. This, however, still represents the 5th highest year of growth on record in the 37 years included in the dataset.

There are several conclusions that can be drawn from this. One is that China, a country dealing with worsening air pollution and traffic congestion, as well as increasing wealth, has embraced rapid transit as an urban mobility solution, and continues to show that commitment in their infrastructure investments. The Chinese government is putting a major effort into promoting a sustainable transportation system, and attempting to address climate change. This data highlights that how China has transformed its public transportation sector dramatically over the last few decades and continues to be on the top in terms of contributing to the global rapid transit growth.

To understand if transit growth is keeping pace with urban population growth, the Rapid Transit to Resident Ratio (RTR) was used as a metric to compare the length of the rapid transit lines (including LRT, BRT and Metro) with the country’s urban population (cities with population over 500,000). China’s RTR has risen steeply over the last 20 years, mainly due to massive continual investment in metro infrastructure. In 2017, 422 km of metro is from newly built and extended metro lines in just 12 cities in mainland China. Guangzhou, a city in Southern China, had the greatest metro growth, with 84 km added in 2017.

The RTR numbers indicate a sharp increase after the millennium, which points out that urban population is proportionally increasing with rapid transit investment. But it should be noted that China is the one that has heavily invested on rapid transit infrastructures and with their urban population growth decreasing significantly it appears that the global increase in RTR could be mostly attributed to China.

Although Taiwan has only three rapid transit systems operating in four cities, it saw the highest RTR growth in 2017, due to the opening of the 51 km Metro in the city of Taoyuan.

Kaohsiun Tram, Taiwan | Source: www. urbanrail.net

Since 2009, Asian countries have contributed the highest to the global rapid transit growth, mostly through robust metro development. Four cities in China: Xiamen, Guiyan, Shijiazhuang, Yinchuan, and three cities in India: Hyderabad, Kochi and Lucknow opened their 1st metro lines in 2017, bringing the total number of cities with metro to 178.

In 2017, Asia had more robust LRT development than on any other continent. Notably, LRT lines opened for the first time in Shenzhen, China; Kaohsiung, Taiwan; and in Izmit and Izmir, Turkey. Outside of Asia, LRT lines opened in Granada, Spain; Luxembourg city, and Aarhus, Denmark, bringing the total to 397 cities with LRT.

We can expect this trend to continue. At the end of 2017, China’s central government announced a policy to relax the minimum population requirements for local governments to pursue metro projects from 3 million residents to 1.5 million. As a result, smaller cities can build metro systems, with China expected to have around 6400 km of rapid transit infrastructure by 2020.

Fortaleza will host the 2019 MOBILIZE SummitBucheon City, South Korea will receive an Honorable Mention

Fortaleza, Brazil a coastal city of 2.6 million in the state of Ceara, is the 5th largest city in the nation, and growing rapidly. As with many cities around the world, Fortaleza has struggled to meet their growing need for urban mobility without sacrificing the environment and quality of life for their residents. Fortunately, the city’s actions over the past couple of years have shown that they are facing this challenge head-on.

The city has been implementing good practices on their streets since 2014, including complete streets, or equitable division of road space; reducing CO2, and increasing road safety by prioritizing public transport, cycling, and walking. In 2018, Fortaleza reached a goal of 108 km of dedicated bus lanes, which include refurbished bus terminals and a fare-integrated transport system. In addition, they have delivered a whopping 225 km of cycling infrastructure, and integrated bike share systems with public transport. Road safety elements implemented include a reduced speed limit, narrowing roads for cars, raised pedestrian crossings, and redesigns of intersections. As a result, deaths from traffic collisions were reduced from 14.66 (per 100,000) in 2014, to 9.71 in 2017.

“Fortaleza has taken the right approach to transport, which is one that moves away from private cars, to one that prioritizes and integrates pedestrians, cyclist, and public transport users,” says Michael Kodransky, Chair of the Sustainable Transport Award Committee and Head of MOBILIZE, “There is a growing realization among cities that the individual transport model is unsustainable, and we’re very happy to showcase Fortaleza’s leadership over the next year. We very much look forward to bringing 200+ sustainable transport experts to see the city’s achievements for themselves at next year’s MOBILIZE.”

The STA committee was particularly impressed with the replicability of Fortaleza’s projects, as many are based on low cost interventions, partnerships with the private sector, and pilot projects that gather data to justify further capital projects. Fortaleza, has already been working with different cities to share the good practices on sustainable transport and road safety, from a developing city perspective.

“Despite the challenges faced as a developing country city, Fortaleza has demonstrated that through creativity, innovation, leadership and public participation, it is possible to achieve successful results in promoting sustainable mobility in a short term. One of our main strategies has been to adapt international good practices to our local context and we believe that MOBILIZE 2019 will be an important opportunity to maximize the exchange of experiences. We feel honored in receiving this price and to host such prestigious event in our city.” says the mayor of Fortaleza, Roberto Claudio Rodrigues Bezerra.

Walkway in Citizen’s River, Bucheon City.

Bucheon City, South Korea will receive the honorable mention for their creation of an extensive new network of cycling and walking paths, including transforming areas around three metro stations into community and cultural public spaces.

Both cities will be honored at an award ceremony in Washington, DC in January 2019 during the Transport Research Board annual meeting. Fortaleza will be the site of MOBILIZE 2019, ITDP’s annual Sustainable Transport Summit organized in partnership with the Volvo Research and Education Foundations. The event will showcase best practices and lessons in sustainable mobility to an international group of city practitioners and researchers, spotlighting this emerging city as a learning lab. For more information, visit mobilizesummit.org.

For the last decade, Seattle has been the fastest growing city in the U.S. The population boom, the city’s biggest since the 19th century Yukon Gold Rush, has strained transportation infrastructure, which relies almost entirely on surface buses without many dedicated lanes. In the 1960s and 1970s, voters turned down federal funding to build a mass transit system and the city has been paying the price ever since. But the tide is turning in favor of transit, with the current generation of voters approving a $54 billion mass transit measure in 2016 that will build out regional light rail over the next 20 years.

To help think big within city limits, Seattle relies on Benjamin (Benjie) de la Peña, Chief of Strategy and Innovation for the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT). He came to the Emerald City after nearly a decade in philanthropy with the Rockefeller Foundation, where he oversaw pioneering mobility initiatives like Walk Score, Transit Score, Digital Matatus, and the BRT Standard. As a former local to Miami, New York, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and his native metro Manila, Benjie knows his way around cities of all shapes and sizes.

ITDP: The theme of MOBILIZE is making space for mobility in booming cities. What is your city doing to address mobility in the face of rapid urbanization? And what are the challenges in accelerating these solutions?

Benjamin de la Peña: We’ve added 100,000 people in the last 10 years. That’s tremendous growth for a North American city. To accommodate everyone, the first thing we’re doing is expanding options. Seattle, both the region and the city itself, has excellent support for investing in transportation over the last decade.

Community Transit Double Tall bus in Downtown Seattle, US

We’ve renewed Bridging the Gap with a Move Seattle levy, which is $930 million dollars over nine years for building up infrastructure. There’s the $45 million dollar per year Seattle Transportation Benefit District that allows us to buy transportation services, mostly bus services, and we’ve gotten to where about 62% of the households in Seattle are now within a 10 minute walk of a frequent bus line that comes every 10 minutes or less..

Those investments have amounted to really great ridership. About 75% of commuters within the city and people coming in from outside the city travel to work by a means other than single occupancy vehicles. We’ve lowered single occupancy vehicle use from 30% in 2016 to 25% in 2017 by increasing transit, expanding bike infrastructure, and connecting sidewalks.

We’re also figuring out new, emerging technologies like rideshare, ridehail, and dockless bike share. At the core, we provide the people who live, work, and play in Seattle with more transportation options, other than single occupancy vehicles. We’ll continue to push in terms of understanding the choices that our commuters have from the moment when they’re making that choice, and building up infrastructures that creates complete streets and more balanced uses of the street.

What impact would you like to have as SDOT Chief of Strategy and Innovation in the coming years to address the issue of mobility and rapid urbanization?

On street use, there is so much construction going on we need to figure out a way to communicate better when it comes to road closures. In transit and mobility, we’ve got a streetcar that we need to complete that network, and then we’re buying up more transportation services. Not just bus, we need to figure out how to use microtransit. How do we use dockless bike share and everything else that’s coming in? We want to make sure that all of these emerging services are equitable in line with Seattle’s new mobility playbook.

The playbook sets out four plays that are a response to this technology because the transportation system is highly inequitable. In order to function in North American cities, you need to own a car. So what we’re trying to do is first we make sure that all of these emerging technologies, which are disrupting transportation in cities, deliver fair and just transportation.

We want to make sure that we put people first, instead of being enamored by autonomous vehicles or whatever new technologies are coming. We want to decide first what kind of city do we want, then we embrace the technologies and ask the technologies to adapt to the kind of city we want.

We need to be organized within SDOT. I want to build out an information-driven transportation system now, but government agencies are not completely equipped for this. We need to act as an information broker and push out data as a service, so one of the key things I want to build out is an information infrastructure plan for Seattle. We have four mobility plans in Seattle: pedestrian, bike, transit, and freight.

We require a fifth plan, which is information infrastructure. And the question there is not about technology, it’s about what information do we need to deliver at a particular time in a particular place, so that users, whether they are autonomous vehicles, people with smartphones, or whoever else get the confirmation they need on how to use the transportation system and the choices in front of them at the right time.

What city projects anywhere in the world are most interesting to you right now?

I am absolutely fascinated by how Chinese cities have flipped their bus systems into all electric fleets very quickly by adapting to the power system rather than waiting for the power system to be rebuilt. Rather than waiting for power distribution systems to be able to handle charging infrastructure, cities like Guangzhou and Shenzen put capacitors and batteries in bus depots so that the buses can come and load. That allowed the cities to turn around and give incentives for renewing the fleet battery-powered engines.

I am fascinated by autonomous vehicles, particular multi-ride autonomous vehicles, which is still a toy system right now in multiple cities with usually just one route or one direction. But that technology could be really interesting as we provide more transportation options. I’m not a big fan of autonomous vehicles as private cars, but if these are larger vehicles that could carry more people and we could pair it with infrastructure like BRT, we will get much more efficient transportation.

Lots of cities are experimenting with scooters. We’re not sure if we’re going to do that in Seattle yet, but electric scooters and electric bikes could really be game changers. Of course you look at the granddaddies of complete bike infrastructure like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and we need to do that. We want to be able to do it in a city like Seattle if we can get past the politics, because that’s more transportation options and the game changer of the electric bike is that I can be a granny and be doing hills in Seattle.

What are you most excited to see or learn about at MOBILIZE?

I want to see DART, the Dar es Salaam bus rapid transit project. When I was at the Rockefeller Foundation, there was still a back and forth with Dar about whether it was going to move forward or not. I also want to understand what cities are really doing around informal transportation. I co-wrote a monograph on innovations in informal transportation because is still a critical piece of urban transportation. If you look at cities like Dhaka, 30% of the city’s workforce is employed in connection with informal transportation.

We need to innovate how to get all the good things about informal transit – like the availability and ability to go places that larger infrastructure can’t go – and not get all the bad things that go with it like safety problems. I’d like to see where Dar es Salaam is thinking about that and if there are other cities around the world that are thinking about how do you deal with informal transportation.

How is Seattle leveraging data to alleviate crippling traffic congestion?

We have adapted systems in terms of traffic management and traffic lights in a couple of corridors. We monitor all of these so that we’re looking at the performance of corridors. Of course that’s still driven by vehicles crossing through a particular corridor and we need to be better at figuring out metrics for people. This summer, we are piloting a study in 25 neighborhoods with the Gehl Institute on what are people doing in the streets.

That brings to the table more of our understanding of how the right or way is used as public space and gives us better leverage to ask what interventions are actually working. In developed world cities, the largest store in data is about vehicle movement and so we then respond to vehicle movement. We need a counter-narrative that responds to how people actually use space.

We are studying whether congestion pricing will work for the city so that we can price the roads correctly and correct the inequalities that are in the system. Internally we are trying to get our house in order particularly around incident management and closures. Our systems are so disparate, we don’t always know exactly what we need to know at the right moment. That’s because we gather data for recordkeeping and we don’t treat data as an asset.

What lessons from the private and philanthropic sectors are you applying to your role in the public sector?

Understand the system. Projects don’t exist in vacuums and if you want to move something forward, you can’t just be pushing at one aspect. You have be thinking about the system and how they interlock. So as I move a project forward in one segment, I have to understand what are the drivers of that system. What other pieces need to be moved and who are the partners we need to recruit for both the expertise and the support as we try to enact institutional change?

Seattle is one of the few U.S. cities that has seen increased bus ridership in the last few years. Why do you think that is?

We provide more bus service. As Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit, said, “Frequency is freedom.” If I know that I’ll probably wait just five, at most ten minutes, for my bus to come, then it’s an easier choice. The worst situation is you wait 15 or 20 minutes and there’s no bus coming. Technology has helped too with apps like OneBusAway and Transit – all of these systems make bus travel more predictable because I know exactly when the next bus will arrive.

In my new role, we want to explore how we can better understand the choices that commuters make – whether to ride the bus or take a bike or drive – and figure out how to nudge them into more sustainable options. I want the agency to learn the methods of human-centered design; we need to move faster and fail and learn better, so we are also rolling out “lean” and trying out “agile”.

We know that rapid changes in technology precipitate changes in organizations and institutions and we want to be ahead of that curve.

This interview is the part of the MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam Speaker Series. In this series, we will feature interviews with speakers and researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where they will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflect on MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam’s theme: Making Space for Mobility in Booming Cities.

When schoolchildren in Dar es Salaam don’t have to fear every time they cross the road after the final bell rings, they can thank Simon Kalolo. He’s a program officer with Amend, sub-Saharan Africa’s leading road safety NGO, which started a program called School Area Road Safety Assessments and Improvements (SARSAI) now underway in ten African countries: Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Benin, Namibia, and Botswana.

From offices in Tanzania, Ghana, and Mozambique, Amend staff work with local authorities to identify schools with high rates of traffic injuries to amend – hence the name – through their program with a set of proven, evidence-based interventions like speed bumps, zebra crossings, road signs, and sidewalks. While these might be no-brainers in most world cities, understaffed and fiscally constrained local governments in sub-Saharan Africa sometimes need the extra push. Amend’s work has been recognized by the World Health Organization and the NGO is a member of the United Nations Road Safety Collaboration.

ITDP: The theme of this year’s MOBILIZE is “making space for mobility in booming cities”. What is your city doing to address mobility in the face of rapid urbanization and what are the challenges in accelerating these solutions?

Simon Kalolo: In Dar es Salaam we are grateful that the city has been able to bring into operation new transportation: bus rapid transit. It has brought a big change, enabling people to safely and more efficiently move from one part of the city to the other. We are extremely happy that it is making the difference that was intended when it came into action.

One of the challenges we are facing is that commitment from governments is still lacking in many places where we are working. The priority in many places now is to put down infrastructure and get the mileage high, but when it comes to safety being incorporated that still lacks commitment. MOBILIZE will make a difference because without bringing people together from across the world, some countries take it quite lightly.

What impact would you like to have in your role in the coming years to address the issue of mobility and rapid urbanization?

Our key responsibility remains educating the masses, but also advocating for more pedestrian facilities to be incorporated. We are raising our voices that the improvements should not only focus on four-wheeled and motorized vehicles, rather the priority should be given to pedestrians and particularly young pedestrians like students and children. We focus on those vulnerable users by equipping them with knowledge on how to use these improved facilities.

What projects, anywhere in the world, are most interesting to you right now?

What’s happening now in Shanghai is remarkable. The population pressure that the city is going through currently and how they project to transport these people on a daily basis. As much as transportation is our key area, they show environment and pollution coming together in that particular question. For a city like Shanghai where the levels of pollution are extreme and now the population is high, they are thinking about green or electric public transports – that is extremely fascinating.

Photo Source: Amend

What are you most excited about seeing or learning at MOBILIZE?

Bringing together different supporters from all over the world is a tremendous opportunity. Sharing knowledge and experience from colleagues all over the world really adds up something that Tanzanians in the transportation sector will learn. It is also quite an experience for our fellow transport stakeholders who are coming from cities and countries where setting up a project like Dar es Salaam’s BRT has not been implemented: cities like Nairobi, Abuja, Lusaka. It should be interesting for them to see that it is possible rather than seeing these special examples from Tokyo, London, Moscow, and other places. Dar es Salaam being the host this time around will give a lot of insight to those coming from low- and middle-income countries to learn from the more experienced.

How does Amend address the issues of children and caretakers in regards to road safety?

Our program really focuses on that particular issue. Apart from providing infrastructure interventions around schools, we also provide tailored road safety education to students themselves on how to use these particular infrastructure interventions because we know that education alone does not necessarily reduce the risk of injuries. It is when we have a whole system outreach it makes a difference and that is exactly what we are doing in this city.

Our main success is the reduction in injuries around high-risk schools that have more than 10 injuries per year. Another success is our partnership to capacitate local road safety NGOs in other African cities. For example, we go to Lusaka, select a small NGO there, work with them, and make sure that they play a key role on the ground. When we are gone we are confident that at least they will continue implementing these projects as they expand.

What approaches are most likely to succeed for rapid deployment of road safety strategies, whether in Dar es Salaam or any city?

Most important is partnership and by partnership, I mean we cannot sit and point fingers at the governments and local authorities and say that they should be responsible for taking road safety to the next level. With motorized vehicles causing increased risks and the population pressure that cities are facing in many places, civil society, private sector, and international organizations all must come together to raise up this voice. We are putting road safety on the map globally and through that we will hopefully see more private sector and international corporations putting pressure on government to have road safety as a key component in transport programs and projects.

This interview is the part of the MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam Speaker Series. In this series, we will feature interviews with speakers and researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport where they will discuss their work in sustainable transport and reflect on MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam’s theme: Making Space for Mobility in Booming Cities.

Webinar Video

Webinar Presentation Slides

About the Webinar

With the arrival of private dockless companies that claim to provide bikeshare profitably (that is, without subsidy), the potential of bikeshare as a viable and rapidly scalable transportation option is being realized in cities around the world and barriers to urban cycling are diminishing. However, unregulated dockless bikeshare systems have generated negative outcomes, like oversupply of bikes, disorderly public spaces, and use of low-quality equipment. Now, cities must take an active role to minimize these challenges, and clearly define how this mode will integrate into their transportation networks and contribute to improved accessibility for residents and visitors. Tianjin, an early adopter of such municipal regulations, as well as other Chinese cities provide helpful case studies to evaluate lessons learned so far.

This webinar will discuss policy options for dockless bikeshare regulation, and review the dockless bikeshare policies implemented in several Chinese cities and their effects.

About the Presenters

Dana Yanocha | Senior Research Associate, ITDP

Dana Yanocha’s work includes research and analysis of trends in sustainable transportation and development. Dana is passionate about identifying connections between the social, economic, and environmental spheres of sustainable development, with a particular interest in providing guidance to cities to strengthen transportation networks, leverage emerging technology and innovations, and improve overall accessibility. Prior to joining ITDP in 2017, Dana worked for the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development in Chicago, and for Resources for the Future, an environmental economics think tank in Washington, DC. She holds an MA in Sustainable Urban Development from DePaul University and a BA in International Politics from Penn State University.

Deng Han | Senior Transportation Engineer, ITDP China

Deng Han is a senior transportation engineer of ITDP China and a consultant of the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank who focuses on Street Design, Non-motorized Traffic and Bike Sharing. He has worked intensively on the sustainable transportation projects in Guangzhou, Beijing, Tianjin, Manila, Jakarta, Melaka, Peshawar, Guiyang, etc., and several research reports and planning guidelines, such as Access for All-Guidance Note on Inclusive Street Design for Asia and the Pacific and China NMT Bluepaper. He also engages in researches of Dockless Bike Sharing and Bicycle Superhighway, relevant research findings were published in ITDP official website, Chinadialogue, Financial Times, etc.

ITDP, together with an international committee of development and transport experts, invites you to nominate your city for the Annual Sustainable Transport Award.

Nominations are now open and will be accepted online at staward.org until April 13, 2018.

Since 2005, the Sustainable Transport Award has recognized profound leadership and vision in sustainable transportation and urban livability. These strategies should improve mobility for all residents, reduce transportation greenhouse and air pollution emissions, and enhance safety and access for bicyclists and pedestrians. Nominations are accepted from any interested parties, including government, civil society organizations, and academic institutions. Nominations must include verifiable project data and contact information for the city.

Cities of all sizes from all over the world have been recognized by the committee for best practices in sustainable transport. Past winners include:

2017 STA winner, Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Yichang, China

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Mexico City, México

Medellín, Colombia

San Francisco, United States

Ahmedabad, India

Seoul, South Korea

Bogotá, Colombia

A complete list of winning cities with details on their win is available at staward.org.

The 2018 winner, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, is the first African City to win the STA, for launching a series of transformative improvements that bring a high quality rapid transit system to its streets combined with walking and cycling infrastructure improvements. The changes are anchored around the Dar es Salaam Bus Rapid Transit system, or DART, a high quality-high capacity system incorporating best practice design and features, the first true BRT system in East Africa. DART has reduced commute times by more than half for residents, who previously faced upwards of four hours stuck in traffic every day. In addition, the city has built cycle lanes and improved intersections and sidewalks along the corridor.

Dar es Salaam BRT system

In June 2018, Dar es Salaam will host the MOBILIZE Summit, held each year in the winning city. MOBILIZE brings together 200 international urban transport and development planners, practitioners, and officials, world-class researchers, and NGO representatives to share strategies, challenges, research and study the example of Dar es Salaam as an international best practice in sustainable transport. The winner of the 2019 STA is where the summit goes next year.

“The Sustainable Transport Award is about celebrating bold vision and momentous changes that improve quality of life for people in cities. In the nearly 15 year history of the award, the nominees have often included cities doing great work under the radar,” says Michael Kodransky, chair of the STA Committee, “There are so many inspiring changes happening on the ground in cities that aren’t known as having the usual transport best practices. The STA and MOBILIZE are great vehicles for recognizing political courage and showcasing the latest achievements. It’s also a great opportunity for those of us working in sustainable transport to learn from innovative approaches, which are shared with a global cohort of the leading influencers at MOBILIZE”.

The 2019 winner will be announced at MOBILIZE Dar es Salaam on June 28, 2018. The winner and honorable mentions will be recognized at a ceremony and reception in Washington, DC during the Transport Research Board conference the following January.

Disruption has come to the once calm and steady business of municipal bikeshare, where the Chinese experience is a harbinger of the future for cities everywhere. Virtually overnight last year, red, yellow, and blue bikes sprang up on seemingly every corner in Guangzhou. But they had one crucial difference from the traditional public bike-share system that has been offering residents two wheeled mobility since 2010: They were dockless.

These bikes could be found – and left – anywhere in the city, thanks to a built-in lock that released when the user reserved the bike via a smartphone app and a QR code.

On the surface, this degree of convenience compared to traditional bike-share with its dedicated docking stations seemed a brilliant innovation in delivering a solution to the perennial “last kilometer” problem. After all, people who own bicycles lock them as close as they can to their destination – outside the office, on campus, at a bike rack near the grocery store – rather than leave them at designated locations. But the introduction of a private innovation did not come without headaches. For one, it seems there can be too much of a good thing, as bikes flooded the streets; for another, the sudden rush of rogue bikes for rent onto the streets of Guangzhou also upended municipal plans for expansion of the public system.

Guangzhou’s traditional public bicycle system launched in June 2010. With stations located along the Zhongshan Avenue BRT corridor, the system appeared to meet an obvious need in the neighborhood. According to data provided by the Guangzhou public bicycle company, as of December 2016, the system contained 8,850 bicycles and more than 110 docking stations. That’s an increase from the initial launch of 1,000 vehicles and 18 docking stations. A total of 35,382,400 trips have been made using this service.

Dockless bike share bikes’ surge in popularity in cities such as Guangzhou, where ITDP observed 55 percent of riders on a given day using a dockless bike, and only 2 percent using the city’s bike share bikes.

With five successful years under its belt, Guangzhou proposed a major bike-share expansion in 2015. The city government planned to launch 100,000 traditional public bicycles, which would make it one of the largest systems in the world (New York’s Citibike, for example, has 12,000 bikes). However, as of January 2016, there were still only 10,000 bikes. What happened?

Since September 2016, the privately-owned dockless companies Mobike, ofo, Xiaoming, Bluegogo, U-bicycle, and Coolqi Bike have been players in the Guangzhou market. With a simple per-ride price and convenient smartphone payment, these dockless bike-sharing systems have grown explosively. By the end of May 2017, more than 700,000 dockless shared bikes could be found on Guangzhou streets, with more than 7.5 million registered users and more than 4 million daily trips.

The impact of dockless bike-share on cycling culture has been remarkable. ITDP conducted a survey of bike volumes along the Zhongshan Avenue BRT corridor. Measured in June 2017, over a year after dockless bike-sharing came to Guangzhou, the volume of bikes in the vicinity of Gangding Station and Tangxia Station is up more than 500 percent and 100 percent respectively than in previous years. Crucially, about 55 percent of rides are on dockless shared bikes and only 2 percent are on traditional public bikes. Daily trips by the public bike-share have plummeted from 14,000 to 9,000 per day since the advent of private dockless bike-share.

While this growth might suggest that private dockless bikes are a superior product to traditional public bike-share with docking stations, the Guangzhou experience makes it clear that dockless bike-sharing companies value rapid launch over long-term management. With large deployments, shared bikes are put on the street in a disorderly manner with the hope of cornering the market. Operational costs are in turn transferred onto the back of the city, which must use its resources to keep the clusters of bikes from clogging streets, sidewalks, and public spaces. Newspapers have even reported that users are wedging private dockless bikes into the public system’s docking stations. The Guangdong/Guangzhou Consumers Commission claims that 73.9 percent of respondents expressed support for the development of dockless bike-sharing. However, at this time there is no formal agreement with the city, and these companies pay no fees to the city.

Recognizing the impact of dockless bike-share, the Guangzhou Communications Commission issued technical guidelines for parking urban bicycles in the city center and a blueprint for standardizing Internet rental bikes in Guangzhou. Meanwhile, the public system has undergone a transformation, driven in part by the innovations of the private system. At the moment, the Guangzhou traditional public bicycle system is building up its IT infrastructure to accept Yang Cheng Tong (a local transportation payment card), as well as mobile payments via WeChat, APP, and Alipay.

As private bike-share expands outside China – it can already be found on the streets of Seattle and Washington, DC – there’s debate over whether these two competitors can coexist. We think they can. Traditional public bicycle and dockless bike-sharing have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they learn from each other as a result. Traditional public bicycles are learning to go dockless and adopt online convenience from the dockless bike-sharing systems, while dockless bike-sharing is shedding its chaotic approach in favor of a more rational approach to growth and street parking. There are definitely advantages to having a set location for bikes (docked) and also more flexible bikes (dockless), but they can only work together if there is an intentional plan, with regulations for dockless to complement docked and to reserve precious space for pedestrians. Ideally, traditional public bicycles and dockless bike-sharing will become an organic blend offering a convenient service for the public’s “last kilometer” and short trips.

Progress is underway. Xiaoming, Mobike, and other companies are recognizing their mistakes and working on a virtual “geo-fence” to comply with new bike parking requirements. The public and private models are coming from opposite directions, but will hopefully meet in the middle to strike a compromise in both convenience and order, providing the best experience for all of the city’s mobility needs.

This blog post is modified from an article in the 29th issue of the Sustainable Transport magazine. You can find the article and others here.

According to the World Health Organization, global road deaths equaled 1.25 million in 2015 – more than the number of people killed annually in homicides.

Road safety advocates are striving to cut the number of deaths and injuries from road traffic crashes in half by 2020. To reach that ambitious target, ITDP has been working in Brazil, China, and Mexico using the latest ideas to place people ahead of cars and make roads safer for everyone.

The modern road-safety movement began with Ralph Nader’s 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which called out car manufacturers for failing to include seat belts and other safety features in vehicles. Next came the drunk-driving campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, led by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Personal stories of losing children transformed the conversation around road safety, and the organization became one of the most effective and recognizable advocacy charities in the United States. A new revolution is happening around road safety as streets are redesigned and re-engineered to place people—not cars—at the core of their use.

Three exciting ITDP projects are spearheading the efforts of this revolution: supporting Vision Zero in Mexico City, taking a child-friendly approach to design in Changsha, China, and changing the way citizens interact with their streets in São Paulo, Brazil.

In 2015, Mexico City became the first city in a low or middle-income country to adopt Vision Zero. This approach to road safety proposes that collisions are not “accidents” but preventable incidents that can be avoided by systemic action.

Sweden launched the concept in the 1990s and watched its traffic deaths drop from 7 per 100,000 to less than 3 per 100,000 in 2014. The approach has been successfully adopted in cities throughout Western Europe too, and more recently in North America.

Despite this initial success, Vision Zero in Mexico City is at a critical juncture. ITDP is working with the FIA Foundation to address data gaps, vulnerable areas such as school zones, and most importantly, the upcoming mayoral elections. As Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera turns his focus to the national stage in 2018, Mexico City will be left without its original Vision Zero champion. ITDP will address this gap directly and work during the campaign to put people-centered street design—and the lives saved through Vision Zero policies—on candidates’ agendas.

Praça Getúlio Vargas Filho in São Paulo, Brazil, as it currently is…

…and a rendering of how the street will be improved, adding pedestrian space, cycle lanes, and crosswalks.

ITDP is taking a different approach to road safety in Changsha, a city in central China. A startling statistic – according to China’s Department of Transportation Statistics, more than 18,500 children under 14 years old die in traffic every year – led ITDP to work with the City of Changsha to adopt road-safety measures under the Child-Friendly City initiative. These include street design improvements in school zones and road-safety measures incorporated into the city’s long-term development plan for 2050. So far the city has implemented recommended designs in pilot schools, such as improving the walking space around the school and creating waiting areas for parents picking up their kids. The city has committed funding to make additional improvements to sidewalks, intersections, traffic management, and public spaces around schools throughout the city that will put children firmly at the center of street design strategies.

Finally, in early 2017, ITDP’s efforts to promote Zone 40s, or areas of reduced speed and people-centered street design, in São Paulo looked like it had hit a wall. Mayor João Doria took office in January 2017 after explicitly running—and winning on a campaign aimed at increasing speed limits on key expressways with a slogan of “Speed up São Paulo”. One of the administration’s first actions reinstated faster speeds on the expressways in São Paulo and changed the data source for road safety. The situation looked bleak. However, ITDP and a consortium of partners, including the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety, the World Resource Institute, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, and the Global Designing Cities Initiative, didn’t give up. Through strategic engagement and education on the benefits of street redesigns for Zone 40s in the neighborhoods of São Miguel Paulista and Santana, the City embraced the people-centered street redesigns, and has made a commitment to scale up of the efforts throughout the city. This is good news for the citizens of São Paulo as early tests of street redesigns show dramatic improvements to the comfort and enjoyment of pedestrians using the temporarily redesigned streets.

These exciting examples from around the world are just a few of the ways that ITDP is helping cities rethink the way they design their urban environment. As 2018 unfolds, ITDP will move forward with these projects and many more through our field offices. After nearly a century of building for cars, it’s time for cities to put people first.

This blog post is modified from an article in the 29th issue of the Sustainable Transport magazine. You can find the article and others here.

The new tool, Pedestrians First: Tools for a Walkable City will facilitate the understanding and the measurement of the features that promote walkability in urban environments around the world at multiple levels. With a better global understanding of walkability, and more consistent and frequent measurement of the walkability of urban environments, decision-makers will be empowered to enact policies that create more walkable urban areas.

“Cities around the world are recognizing how essential walkability is for the access and health of their citizens, and the economic growth of their cities,” Says Joe Chestnut, Research Associate at ITDP and the author of Pedestrians First, “but walkability is not just a sidewalk, it’s a whole system of design and infrastructure. This tool lays out the basics, with checklists, examples, and policy recommendations to create an enjoyable walking environment in any city.”

Using the framework developed by ITDP for their TOD Standard, Pedestrians First breaks down eleven indicators for measuring walkability, with each indicator and their measurement methods discussed in detail.

Liuyun Xiaoqu, Guangzhou, China

WalkwaysThe most basic feature of urban walkability is complete, continuous, and safe walkway networks that provide clear protection from motor vehicles and are accessible to all people, including those with disabilities.

Best Practice: Liuyun Xiaoqu, Guangzhou, ChinaLiuyun Xiaoqu had been a gated residential complex with clogged streets. The development is now a public center of the Tianhe District’s daily life with car-free, walkable corridors and a lively retail hub that serves residents and shoppers alike.

CrosswalksCrosswalks are necessary for safely connecting the walkway network across vehicle traffic and are a critical part of making walkable areas accessible to all people, including those with disabilities.

Visually Active FrontageVisually active frontages promote safety from crime in walkable areas through informal observation and surveillance by people inside buildings. This is often described as “eyes on the street.”

Central Saint Giles, London, UK

Best Practice: Central Saint Giles, London, UKLondon’s Central Saint Giles development has exclusive restaurants, trendy corporate tenants, luxury, and affordable housing units—but very little parking (mostly reserved for people with disabilities). The site is organized around a public plaza and has ample cycle parking as well as its own bike-share station.

Physically Permeable FrontageSidewalks that are lined with continuous ground-floor activity and services have fewer zones of inactivity, thereby creating a more attractive walking environment that is safer from crime.

Shade and ShelterShade and shelter help to make the walkable environment more comfortable and more accessible by protecting pedestrians from heat, rain, and other elements.

Small BlocksSmall blocks reduce trip distances, making walking more convenient for trips.

Vastra Hammen, Malmö, Sweden

Prioritized ConnectivityConnectivity that prioritizes walking over motorized forms of transportation improves walkability by making walking more convenient relative to other modes of transportation.

Best Practice: Vastra Hammen, Malmö, SwedenVastra Hammen has more pedestrian intersection points than vehicle intersection points, making walking the primary, and easiest, method of access.

Complementary UsesA mix of uses reduces the distance between homes and services, thereby improving access. Shorter trips are more likely to be done by walking.

Access to Local ServicesHaving basic services within easy walking distance enables more of these trips to be undertaken on foot.

Driveway DensityAn urban walking environment that minimizes the locations where pedestrian must cross the path of cars leads to a safer and more comfortable walking experience.

Roadway AreaMinimizing the space given to motorized forms of transportation provides more space for walking infrastructure, such as sidewalks, and minimizes car speeds and volumes, leading to a safer, more convenient walking environment.

“There are many places where the car-centric lifestyle is becoming a thing of the past. People increasingly want to have the option to live in a walkable area, and real estate developers are responding to this,” said Chestnut. “This is great progress, but it is important that walkability isn’t a luxury, its an essential component of equity and sustainability, particularly in the rapidly growing cities of the global south. These developments are great examples of the direction in which we’d like to see development going, oriented towards walking and prioritizing people over cars.”

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